About the Author

Poet B.H. Fairchild (1942-present) composes poems that possess a unique style that somehow captures a sense of dream-like surrealism while still portraying the very real landscape of America’s Midwest. The setting of Fairchild’s most recent collection of poetry, entitled Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (2003), is the small town of Liberal, Kansas. Born in Houston, Texas, Fairchild spent his childhood in small towns in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Nostalgic references to growing up in these Midwestern towns are a central part of his poetry. Sometimes compared to poets such as Billy Collins, W.H. Auden, and Eavan Boland, Fairchild has established himself a solid place among the ranks of contemporary poets. His poetry has received a number of awards, among them the William Carlos Williams Award and the California Book Award. He also received the prize-winning Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Fairchild is the author of several books of poetry, including The System of Which the Body Is One Part, Flight, The Art of the Lathe, The Arrival of the Future, and Local Knowledge. He is currently professor of American literature at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, having received his Ph.D. from the University of Tulsa.  In addition to poetry, Fairchild has also written Such Holy Song: Music as Form, Idea, and Image in the Poetry of William Blake. In this book, Fairchild analyzes Blake’s aesthetic, particularly in terms of music. And if he sees Blake’s poetry as music, Fairchild is equally inspired by the sound that jazz musicians were producing in the 30’s and 40’s. In Fairchild’s poem “Hearing Parker for the First Time,” the reader is taken on a nostalgic ride away from the plains of Kansas as the speaker of the poem (a high school boy) recalls “the bird songs of Charlie Parker.”  Some of Fairchild’s poetry might not be too far off from the “holy song” of Blake’s verses, either. In an interview of Fairchild conducted in Fall 2005 by Paul Mariani, Fairchild said, “I think that in a way Early Occult Memory Systems might be called a religious book.” Fairchild’s technique of pairing abstract ideas alongside everyday images contributes to the “religion” of the poetry collection. The collection’s first poem, from which the book derives its title, refers to “shapes saved from time’s dark creek.” Because of the nostalgic tone of the book, many of the poems often seem to be trying to “save” something from this “dark creek” of time, and this ethereal quest to establish a rapport with the past is, in part, what gives the poems such a feeling of religious fervor. Fairchild’s poem “Rave On” follows the lives of Kansas boys coming of age amidst “Baptist wheat fields,” and Biblical references are scattered among lines about oil rigs and Ford engines. In the interview, Fairchild has indicated his interest in writers like Augustine, Aquinas, Kierkegaard, “and especially now Rene Girard. . . .” He has also admitted to going through a period of agnosticism before returning to Christianity as a member of the Anglican Church. Interestingly, Fairchild’s wife is Jewish and he envies some of her traditions. To read the complete interview and to find out more about B.H. Fairchild, please visit http://www.cstone.net/~poems/biomaria.htm. The interview originally appeared on ImageJournal.org. Some of B.H. Fairchild’s poems are available on-line and can be accessed through the following links: http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/fairchild_poem.html http://www.poetrysociety.org/bhfairchildpoem.html http://www.poemhunter.com/b-h-fairchild/ http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=27880

--Jason Hogue